Nuke sites looted too - old news
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: October 24, 2004 - October 30, 2004 Archives
The media - the news cycle - the whole she-bang is really hard toget a handle on. From my perspective the al Quaqaa story should have surfaced two weeks ago which is when I first ran a link to a UN press release on the topic - but few in the media paid attention to that. Now comes this from Josh Marshall - it's hard to point to a single item in his blog, so I've linked to the day that contains this and a zillion other items of interest. But here's the one that gets me in terms of press coverage.
Posted by Greg Stone at October 31, 2004 04:50 AM(October 30, 2004 -- 05:21 PM EDT // link // print)
One of the oddities of the al Qaqaa is story is why it should seem even remotely surprising to anyone who's actually been paying attention to what's been happening in Iraq over the last eighteen months. After all, almost all of Iraq's nuclear facilities -- containing both equipment of use to nuclear programs, partially enriched uranium, and other goodies for baddies -- were similarly looted at around the same time.
As Brett Wagner, a professor at the Naval War College, put it a year ago in USA Today ...
In the weeks before the invasion, the U.S. military repeatedly warned the White House that its war plans did not include sufficient ground forces, air and naval operations and logistical support to guarantee a successful mission. Those warnings were discounted — even mocked — by administration officials who professed to know more about war fighting than the war fighters themselves.
But the war fighters were right. Military commanders weren't given enough manpower and logistical support to secure all of the known nuclear sites, let alone all of the suspected ones.
It wasn't until seven of Iraq's main nuclear facilities were extensively looted that the true magnitude of the administration's strategic blunder came into focus.
Why is Qaqaa surprising?
-- Josh Marshall
